Hef interview in V magazine >> The Playboy Cyber Club Discussion Groups

To clarify: I never meant to imply that Playboy's pics are, have ever been, or should be about shock value. In fact, I never used that term. What I meant in regard to the pics is that before the recent (10-15 years) proliferation of men's magazine-type adult photos in competitors' mags and the Internet, Playboy had the luxury of being the only classy game in town (not that many of its contemporary competitors are necessarily all that classy). The magazine featured beautiful women, the occasional naked celebrity, compelling literary content, etc., and the mere fact that one had to be "of age" to even purchase it gave it that much more of "forbidden pleasure" sense. Important to consider, however, is that I am only 37 years old. I reached Playboy purchasing age in the early 80's in the dark days of the Reagan Administration, a period that Playboy, Inc. readily admits was its darkest, most stifling and frustrating time. But being then an adolescent male and having unfettered access to Playboy represented (to me, at least) a rite of passage into manhood (not THE main rite, by any means, but a significant one), and further glorified the mag's image in my mind.

Sure, there were other, lesser men's mags that had been available for some time at that point: Oui, Hustler, Penthouse, etc., but in my mind they cheapened the overall image of what a classy but semi-naughty men's mag could be. I never found their photo content particularly appealing. I must admit that I never read more than a tiny portion of the literary content in those mags.

After the initial hormonal thrill of Playboy access subsided a bit, I began reading the mag cover to cover instead of "photo caption to photo caption". Then my appreciation for Playboy increased significantly more.

Skip ahead a bunch of years: finding Playboy-type photography, celebrity nudity, "Girls Gone Wild", provocative attire in everyday life that would have seemed shocking just a few years before, etc., is so rampant and commonplace that it has lost almost all of its "forbidden" quality that made it so exciting. Instead of breathless anticipation of next month's Playboy issue (tempered, of course, by the fact that age and experience puts that into perspective a bit), today one need only turn on cable television, surf the web, visit a club, etc. to get the same quality female content 24/7 that Playboy promised every 4 1/2 weeks. Today, it is all about instant gratification.

So what makes Playboy rise head and shoulders above the rest anymore? Personal preferences notwithstanding, a pretty girl is a pretty girl. With so many "adult" outlets from which to choose, consumers get pickier and pickier, our tastes more niched than ever before. You all have read the comments and complaints on this message board about the seemingly non-stop parade of enhanced boobs in Playboy. So what if there are a lot of those? They certainly are representative of an ever-increasing percentage of young femmes jockeying for position for men's mag exposure (or for whatever personal reasons they have). Beautiful women who will disrobe for the world to see, with or without enhanced boobs, are a gift horse: don't look them in the mouth.

As far as the "anti-intellectualism" comments I made, that was in reference to what I perceive as men's magazines' readership being less discriminating about what passes for challenging discourse. Other board members have also bemoaned the fact that the subject of the Playboy Interview too often is someone with marginal celebrity instead of somebody with something interesting to say. Don't blame Playboy, however. Blame the "cult of personality" we live amidst. I'm all for the "shocking" examples of literary content and viewpoint that KBOC suggests. But I think we'll find, now and as the years drag on, that fewer and fewer readers will. The younger of our readership were weaned on Entertainment as news, scandal as controversy, instant gratification as the de rigeur . That doesn't bode well for a magazine that wants to position itself higher than a Maxim or a Stuff.

Again, it may come down to the half-empty, half-full discussion. Cynical? Me? Quite possibly. But I am no longer naive enough to believe that Americans' tastes and standards will do anything but get lower and cheaper. There will always be a segment of the population that will be a welcome exception to that, but a mass-market magazine will have to do at least some cow-towing to the lowest common denominator to stay competitive.

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